Katrina Victim Finally Gets Memorial Service

Biloxi Katrina Hardy Jackson returns to Biloxi more than two years after his wife was swept away by Katrina's surge

by Diana Lucio

Published: Sat, September 15, 2007 - 10:26 pm CST

Hardy Jackson’s loss touched the nation after Hurricane Katrina. Jackson first shared his story with News Five just hours after Hurricane Katrina swept away his wife. Today Jackson and his family returned to Biloxi, Mississippi to memorialize Tonette Jackson now two years after her death. Radio station WKZL in North Carolina arranged for the service at the Richmond Funeral home in Biloxi and paid for the Jackson family to fly into Biloxi from Atlanta, where they live now.

Jackson says the memorial service brought the family some closure. "It makes us feel much better because it's like when everything happened two years ago we felt like, you know, we like left her behind." The Jackson’s used to live just a few blocks from the funeral home, but all that is left now are only remnants of the life he and his wife once shared together. The Jackson's lost their mother two years ago to Hurricane Katrina after a twenty foot storm surge destroyed their home and swept their mother away. "People just don't know really what I'm going through, that's all I had...all I had,” said, Jackson. "We used to always get in arguments and stuff and then now, I wished that I had never got in an argument with her,” said, Hardy Jackson Jr., Jackson’s son.

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